1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of computer navigation in large heterogeneous collections of objects, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for searching for information, exploring the contents of a collection, and organizing the results in a manner based upon the search or navigation specifications.
2. Discussion of the Background
Existing search and presentation programs leave much to be desired. The typical computer user is faced with a wide variety of usable information: passive information such as document files and images on the local computer and local net, email messages, web sites and web pages, databases, etc., and actively structured information that will process other data; search engines, statistical analysis tools, editors, browsers, mesh reduction tools, file format converters, file transfer utilities, and so on. Tools for looking around among these objects come, to use a flashlight analogy, in ‘wide beam’ and ‘narrow beam’ forms. In a textbook analogy, the wide beam corresponds to using the table of contents (where sections appear in context) and the narrow beam to the index. Software development has concentrated narrowly on searching—the analogue of the index—while neglecting content presentation.
Wide Beam Form
In a wide beam form, items are visible as the leaves on a tree of ‘directories’ or ‘folders’, or in a window corresponding to one of these. Email messages appear as a list and perhaps also in a tree arrangement, usually managed separately by the user's mail software. Web sites, databases and search engines appear one by one or in small groups, each group usually appearing as a set of clickable elements in a list or graphically arranged hypertext document created and controlled by its author, not adjustable by the user. Tools on the user's computer appear in a separate tree such as the Programs menu in Microsoft Windows, with no way to call up ‘those that modify images’, ‘those that enable computer-aided design’, ‘those that modify documents’, etc., unless an expert user arranges them in such groups—and grouping in one way precludes a display grouped otherwise.
The large scale view of what is available is thus fragmented, and rigid. A user who wishes to arrange files by type (for example, placing large 3D scan files on a dedicated disk) cannot simultaneously view them arranged by project. Often the user cannot rearrange the view at all, as with a web page. Tools that support display of the user's own preferred grouping in a new context, as Giage's Webspace product (www.webspace.com) does for web pages, make any change override a previous view. This is like changing Dewey system library classifications or moving physical documents into a different arrangement of physical folders: the old arrangement is lost. The loss is wholly unnecessary when “place a file in a folder” really means “include in the folder's data the physical disk address of the file”, which can be repeated for one file with multiple folders. It is equally unnecessary for all other data objects. (Windows allows placement of a ‘shortcut’ to a file in a second folder, but insists on displaying it and treating it differently. There is no provision for multiple ways to group files for display, with user-controlled movement between them.)
Narrow Beam Form
Search tools provide answers to highly explicit queries. The Windows ‘Find’ tool or a search engine such as Lycos, HotBot, etc., look for objects with tightly defined characteristics: a file with a particular name or part of one, extension, range of dates or sizes, or containing a particular word; a web page on which certain words or phrases occur. This resembles searching a crowded room in darkness, using a laser pointer. Without seeing what is around what it lights, it is hard to improve one's aim and zero in on what one is seeking, or to find related material that adds context to an object found, as one does in turning to a table of contents to see what surrounds an item found in an index.
A user's query is in fact rich with implications as to what Kind of object could be of interest, but no current engine attempts to build a wider view helpful to the user. (The closest to this, in the search engine case, is that certain sites clamor for attention when it just might be relevant. For example, a search for the two words ‘breast stroke’ can return a mixture of listed swimming sites with paid ads for WebMD.com for those interested in breast health, and porn sites for other concerns.) Results are rarely sorted in any way, and where they are (for instance, by the NorthernLight search engine) it is into categories pre-established by the search tool. There is no attempt to respond to the way that the user groups things.
What is needed is a more efficient way to explore what is present, as well as to conduct searches for particular items and present search results to a user so that the user can not merely locate quickly the items of interest, but learn quickly about the presence of related items—where “related” is a user-dependent concept.